


true north

by kangeiko



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-23 01:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17673956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: Jack's a suspicious soul at heart. He doesn't trust anyone, least of all himself.





	true north

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



> A million thanks to Prinzenhasserin and itinerant_vae for kicking this into shape! I couldn't have done it without you. <3
> 
> Thank you also to Sholio for the great prompts, I hope I did them justice and you enjoy the fic.

_Click click click click_

The light-bulb overhead flickered in time with Dottie’s pen clicks. At least, Jack  _thought_  it was flickering. It could have been his head throbbing, he supposed. That last blow had been pretty enthusiastic and the ringing still hadn’t entirely faded from his ears. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility that the light-bulb was perfectly fine and it was his vision that was the problem. He’d been slowly sliding in and out of consciousness and he had been only half-aware when they’d dragged him into the room and strapped him down in the chair.

“Why don’t we start from the beginning,” Dottie said, smiling at him sweetly.

She was wearing the same red lipstick that Carter favored, Jack thought, bewildered. (But Carter wore it better.) “Oh, good,” he said. His tongue felt thick, and there was a strange taste in his mouth, a burst of copper and something oddly bitter. “That’s just what I was hoping we’d do.”

“That’s not a productive attitude, Jack. And here I thought we were friends. Why don’t you tell me what you were doing at the warehouse, hmmm?”

“I don’t remember,” he said after a long pause. He was surprised to find that it was at least a little true. He could remember most of the last few days, but there were definite grey spots, fuzzed to prickling nothingness if he strained too hard in their direction. It didn’t feel like the time Vernon had wiped his memory - it hurt in _very_ different ways - so he didn’t think that someone had intended for him to forget. Maybe it  _was_  the blow to the head, then. That will piss her off, he thought, and for a brief moment his eyes were caught on the red of his interrogator’s mouth and he couldn’t remember who he was thinking about. “I- don’t remember,” he said again, more vehemently, and felt something shift in his chest as he spoke.

“No?”

“No.” His jaw ached and he let his mouth hang open, stretching some of the cramping muscles. Something felt off about it, though, as if there was something in his mouth and it was now leaking out in slow drips in between his wet breaths.

There was another almost imperceptible pause before the clicking started up again.  _Click click click click_  in time with the pulsing light.

“Well,” Dottie said, voice soft, “that’s unfortunate. I had hoped we’ve be able to avoid all this.”

Dazed, Jack looked down to see what the wet feeling on his chest was. Strange. Hadn’t he started out in a white shirt? This one was more red than anything. He blinked, slow and confused, as a hand reached around him and pressed against the side of his neck.

“His pulse is weak,” an unfamiliar voice said from behind him, too close. “We should pause. We don’t want to lose him.”

“He’ll be fine,” Dottie murmured, her eyes fixed on his. “Won’t you, Jack? You want to make the most of what little time we have left. Why don’t you tell me the bits you remember, hmmm?” She reached out and put a comforting hand on his arm. “That’s a good place to start, isn’t it?”

It  _was_  a good place. Her hand was warm and dry on his bare skin, stroking slowly in a wide stripe up his forearm to bury her fingers in the tender junction of nerves hidden in his elbow. That was bad, Jack thought, awareness returning long enough to prompt him into wariness. She shouldn’t be so close.

“Jack,” she said, and her mouth was very close to his, poppy-red and venomous as a snake. “Jack, you were looking for the file. Try to remember. ”

Jack thought hard, trying to remember, to put his thoughts in an order he could access.  _The file?_  He couldn’t think what she meant for a minute. The hand at his neck twisted, and something stung him briefly. Oh, that was  _much_  better, it really was. It was like a glass of cold water on a hot day, or a gulp of oxygen after you’d been under for too long. He didn’t have access to any more of his memory than he had before, but he could articulate it more clearly. That was good, wasn’t it? “Daniel,” he said thickly. “Daniel. He -“ He stopped. What had Daniel done? Nothing with the file, that hadn’t been it. No one had known about it but Jack. And Carter, of course, but then, what had she assumed had happened to it?

“Daniel,” Dottie said, leaning back in her chair, a satisfied smile on her face. “He was with you?”

He felt a pang at that, at the thought of Daniel by his side. But - no. No that hadn’t been it.

“There was the parade,” Jack managed at last. “It was… I didn’t want to go, but… and he said...”

*

“It was just a suggestion,” Daniel said, and there was a strange note in his voice. It wasn’t anger, or impatience, or anything else that Jack could place easily. “I would have thought you’d be all for it.”

If Jack didn’t know better, he’d have thought that Daniel sounded… hurt.

“Don’t assume, Sousa,” he snapped, unsettled. The suggestion had been well-meant, of course - nothing Daniel did was mean-spirited - but it had hit its mark just the same. He felt sick to his stomach just thinking about it. “It makes an ass out of - well, you know.” He put his pen down and leaned back in his chair, resisting the urge to rub at the ache in his chest. His physiotherapist had been very clear that undue pressure on the still-healing site was to be avoided, and when he said  _light activity_ , that did  _not_  mean Jack was allowed back to work. Technically, he was visiting. Stretching his legs, he’d told Rose, and he had commandeered one of the free offices in the basement and started working his way through cold cases. His own attempted murder was one of those, he knew, but that case file was most definitely  _not_  on his desk, having been locked away by Daniel before Jack had even woken up. Unknown assailant, unknown motives, lucky to be alive. No leads whatsoever. An ideal case in many respects, really - if you liked your cases cold, unsolved and likely to come back and kill you. At least they weren’t chasing their tails running down dead ends, he supposed.

“Fine,” Daniel said, and yes, that was definitely hurt in his voice. “I’ll tell them you have better things to do.”

“You do that,” Jack said, and leaned back over his work again. He waited for a moment, but it didn’t seem like Daniel was planning on leaving anytime soon. Sighing, he looked up from the files. “Anything else?”

Daniel was still staring down at him. He hadn’t taken the offered chair, and he hadn’t commented on the piles of documents that Jack had requisitioned from the DC office. Even this late on in the day he looked ridiculously handsome, his hair falling out of its careful pomade and a curl escaping over his forehead. Jack had the strangest urge to reach out and to tuck it carefully back in place. He was suddenly furious with himself. There was nothing to warrant this sort of reaction and the realization made him feel queasy. There  _wasn’t_  anything different about this conversation. If it wasn’t for the slightly pinched look on Daniel’s face, this could have been any other confrontation on any other day: Daniel wanting Jack to live up to some ridiculous ideal, and Jack…

Well. There was a word for people who spent their lives helplessly wanting what they couldn’t have, and Jack wasn’t going to be one of  _those_. “What is it, Sousa?”

Daniel said nothing for another long moment. Then, “food’s getting cold upstairs,” he murmured gently, and turned away. “Hurry up.”

*

“What did he want?” Dottie asked, making a note.

“A parade,” Jack said stupidly. “They had a band booked, and… and a popcorn stand, and…” he couldn’t remember. Something about a gazebo? His brow furrowed with effort. A gazebo would have been nice, actually. Carter could have worn one of her red dresses, and Daniel could have worn his uniform, and… actually, wouldn’t Carter also be in uniform? He’d bet his eyeteeth they’d both look smart like that, neatly pressed and bright-eyed, and they’d be  _happy_ , and he could - he could -

“The  _mission,_  Jack,” Dottie said, long-suffering. “What did Daniel want you to do during the mission?”

*

“Did you save me any of the pepperoni?” Jack leaned against the door frame and tried without much success to look as though it hadn’t exhausted him to take the stairs two flights without rest. (Light activity was desirable, his physiotherapist had maintained, and two flights  _was_  light. Or would have been, before.)

“No,” Daniel said around a mouthful of pizza. He nodded at where Carter and Rose had a map spread across the conference room table, book-ended on either side with open pizza boxes. “There’s plain cheese, and I think Rose also got a salad for you.”

Rose glanced up at this, looking almost surprised to see Jack there. “Chief Thompson! Sorry, I -” she shoved one of the cartons of boxes off the nearby chair and cleared the table-top in front of it. “Please, have a seat.”

“I’m fine,” Jack said, trying without much success to read the map upside down. “What’s going on? I thought we didn’t have any hot cases at the moment.” That was another cause for concern, now that he thought about it logically. Things were  _too_  quiet. It smacked of either someone planning something big, or SSR being out of the loop on stuff that should have been crossing Jack’s - and Daniel’s - desk. Either option was worrying.

_Of course,_  Jack thought caustically,  _maybe SSR is in the loop, but that doesn’t extend to me._  He fixed his gaze on the upside-down map. Was this another off-the-books op that Carter was running with Sousa’s covert approval right under Jack’s nose?

(He was fine. He was. He’d never exactly been close to Carter, after all, and you couldn’t lose someone’s trust if you’d never had it in the first place.)

“Sit down, Jack,” Carter murmured, and somehow she was at his side, an arm under his, half-dragging him to the chair that Rose had cleared for him. She was warm and fragrant against him, even this late on in the day, and for a dizzying moment Jack thought he’d caught a tone of Daniel’s cologne layered over the top of her fresh clean scent. Helplessly, his eyes closed at the thought of what they would have been doing for that to happen. “I thought you said he was doing half-days,” she said to someone over his head, and it took Jack a moment to realize that she was asking Daniel.

“Sure,” Daniel agreed, waving a slice of pizza from the opposite end of the table. “Because that’s so like him. Calm, reasonable -”

“I’m  _right here_ ,” Jack broke in, a little discomfited. Clearly Daniel had not forgiven him for throwing back his peace-offering in his face. Ah, well. It was better than the alternative. “And my hours are my own business. Something’s got you all excited. So who’s going to get me up to speed?” He pointedly ignored Carter’s irate sigh and settled in more comfortably into the hard chair, pulling away from her.

Carter and Daniel exchanged significant looks. He really hated it when they did that, the silent telepathy that had sprung, fully-formed, between them. He was fairly certain it hadn’t been present back in New York… had it? Surely he would have noticed the two of them becoming perfectly in tune and aligned, a closed unit against the world. (And Jack. Of course, and Jack. What did he expect? How could it be otherwise? He was lucky he was in as far as he was; other couples might have cut him out entirely.)

It really was ridiculous, this feeling. What, he was going to try to break up that pair? He knew them better than that. Hell, he knew  _himself_  better. Thinking about either of them was an exercise in futility. Thinking about them both…well. Jack was many things, but he wasn’t a masochist.

“Well?” he demanded, irrationally angry all of a sudden. Daniel had dragged him here through sheer power of guilt-tripping, and now that he was here, he had the Three Stooges dancing attendance on him. “What’s so important that you’re pulling late nights with no case on the books?”

Daniel shrugged at Carter’s raised eyebrow.  _Go ahead._

“We’re still following up on your attempted murder,” Carter said bluntly. On Jack’s other side, Rose leaned over him to hand him a summary file and a salad. “So you can stop squirreling away cold cases in the basement to obsess about as some sort of hysterical displacement activity. We might have a lead.”

“I’m not -” Jack started, and Daniel raised an eyebrow at him from the other side of the table. “I’m  _not_  obsessing.  _Or_  hysterical.” Not any more than he had to be, really. A cold case, no leads, the goddamned  _M. Carter_  file missing and the SSR besieged on all sides; he thought he’d handled it all rather calmly, as a matter of fact.

“If this is you not obsessing, then God help us,” Rose muttered. At Jack’s challenging look she flushed a little but held her ground. “You should still be in bed,” she said stoutly.

Jack scowled. “When did I acquire a second mother, because I really don’t remember asking any of you to turn into hens over this.” His glare included Daniel in that assessment. “A lead? You couldn’t have opened with that?”

“Oh, we’re not fussing,” Carter corrected him, taking the file out of his hands and handing it back to Rose. “We just don’t trust you on something like this. You’re not being read in on this, Jack. You’re just getting the heads-up.”

And just like that, all of Jack’s composure turned to icy dread. The  _M. Carter_  file. He hadn’t said anything to either of them about it. What could the lead be, without that? What had they figured out that he’d missed?

(And if they didn’t know he’d lost the file, how long until Carter figured it out?)

Across the room, Daniel’s eyes suddenly cut from Jack to Carter and back again, something painful freezing to stillness in his expression.

“Anyway,” Carter went on blithely, not looking at him, “we just wanted to let you know that we might have something. But you don’t need to worry about this, Jack. You really should get some rest in the meantime. We can handle this just fine.”

The  _without you_  went without saying.

*

“It made you angry,” Dottie observed. Her mouth quirked with amusement. “Being out of the loop like that. Your own shooting, and Peggy doesn’t want you anywhere near it. She really doesn’t think much of you, does she?”

“N-no,” Jack denied, and it was almost true, but hard to say it nonetheless. “Maybe,” he amended, and that was a little better. He couldn’t even blame them for that. What use had he been to them so far? While he’d been been busy flat on his back in a hospital bed, or staring wistfully at one or other of them, they’d been busy trying to track down the guy that had put a bullet in his chest.

(Did Carter know he’d held something back? Was that why she’d cut him out of the loop?)

It wasn’t like he hadn’t known that the trail was cold, and that all the work they were putting in was on their own time and would likely come to nothing. He knew how it went, after all: you started off livid, working all the hours God sent, and with every passing day of inactivity you were a little less angry. That’s not to say that they wouldn’t have stepped things up if there had been any leads, of course, but the point was, there hadn’t been.

It had been  _months_ , and there had been nothing. For all the progress made on the case, Jack might as well have slipped in someone’s driveway.

He’d come to terms with it, of course. With enough time, with no leads at all, you either accepted it, or you spent your life with an endless itch between your shoulder blades, wondering if whoever had decided you were in the way would find you inconvenient a second time. Maybe that second time there would be no hotel maid to find you in the nick of time, no world-class cardio-thoracic surgeon to repair the damage, no guards around the hospital bed. Maybe that second time it would just be the world removing an inconvenience without any fanfare.

There were no leads they could have been working on, Jack knew. He’d said nothing about the one concrete thing that might have helped, too ashamed at having kept the file to admit to it, too terrified to volunteer the one scrap of information that might have protected him. All he would have lost would have been…

Well. He couldn’t lose what he’d never had in the first place, but it seemed he was pathetic enough to cling on to the scraps of their regard even if it was a poor imitation of what he really wanted.

“Maybe,” he rasped again, and shook his head to clear it. No, no, that wasn’t fair. They were still working on it when they could have stopped. And they hadn’t hidden it from him, had they? They had updated him, after all, even if it had been a perfunctory  _we’re on it, so eat something and go home._

“Ah. Yes. Your pride was hurt.”

That was easier. “Yes.”  _Squirreling away cold cases..._

(She hadn’t even asked him what he was working on.)

He’d known a while back just how smart and capable Carter was, and how little she’d liked him. He’d known how little respect she had for him, scalded more than once by the disdain in her voice whenever she spoke to him. Still.  _Still._

(Maybe it had hurt because she hadn’t intended to be unkind.)

Dottie sat back in the chair, a hand still holding that infuriating pen. “That’s all?”

He fought against it, leaning into the pain in his chest, letting it make his thoughts cloudy and helpless. “Yes,” he managed, and hoped it was enough.

_No._

*

“You know that’s not how she meant it,” Daniel said as they walked slowly back to Daniel’s car. Jack didn’t have a car out here, of course, and Daniel had evidently decided that making Jack take cabs was unacceptable when he could be the world’s worst taxi service instead. “But you’re still healing, Jack. You can’t imagine that we’d want you to risk setting back your recovery.”

“Not over something so unimportant?” Jack said, not meeting his eyes. Carter hadn’t - quite - ordered him home, but it had been damned close. This was what he’d been reduced to, having his agents ordering him around like some kind of -

He fumbled with the car door.

A hand closed over his, stilling him. “Now you’re just being ridiculous,” Daniel said, and he didn’t take his hand away. “Do you even know what it was like when - no, of course you don’t.” His grip was tight over Jack’s, almost painful. He was standing so close that Jack couldn’t avoid his gaze unless he forced himself to turn away. Finally, furiously, he met Daniel’s eyes. “She wouldn’t rest,” Daniel said softly. “She was out of her mind with worry, you should have seen her. She went over that crime scene with a fine-tooth comb, she was  _frantic_ , Jack.”

“Sure,” Jack bit out, suddenly hot with anger and shame. He could see Carter’s anger, all right, and he could see himself silent and still on the hospital bed, holding hostage the one lead that might have moved the case forward. “I bet she was. In between telling me to get out of her hair and fucking  _threatening_  me, I bet she was weeping over my comatose body.” He pulled his hand out from under Daniel’s and opened the door, sliding in with some difficulty. “Are you going to drive me or should I call a cab, Sousa.”

*

“Poor Jack,” Dottie mocked, head tilted and voice lilting. “And here I thought all of you were such good friends.”

There was a long pause. Jack sucked in air too fast, almost fast enough for hyperventilation. They couldn’t ask him questions if he was unconscious, right? And whatever it was they’d injected him with, clearly it had been a small dose. Maybe they  _were_  worried he’d die on them before he gave them anything useful.

It was so hard to  _think_. He couldn’t get himself free, he knew that. He was strapped down too effectively, and had already exerted himself far beyond the approved ‘light activity’. If the pain in his chest was any indication, he’d done some damage already. It was a sharp pain, thin and brittle, as if someone had slid a knife between his ribs and shattered it into a million icy slivers. Should he push into it? Would that push him into consciousness, or would it do even more damage?

That was assuming, of course, that someone would be coming for him. And that - as all things - was by no means guaranteed.

*

The drive back to Jack’s was interminable. Jack didn’t want to talk, and Daniel had finally given up on trying to make him, so, OK, it might have been worse. But still.  _Still._   _She was out of her mind with worry,_  Daniel had said, as if that should mean something. It was easier to blame it on Carter, wasn’t it? That way they could reference her and have their argument without actually having to disagree on anything.  _Peggy_  was the one worried about Jack, and  _Peggy_  was the one trying to track down his assailant, and  _Peggy_  wanted Jack to rest and let her take care of this. And Daniel?

Oh, Daniel was just the guy who said what  _Peggy_  wanted Jack to do, as if Jack was so far down the totem pole that he didn’t even merit her personal attention.

He knew he was being ridiculous. It didn’t make it any easier.

It wasn’t like Jack had stood still on this and let them railroad him. He’d figured that Carter and Daniel would pull every lead, and he’d been content to let them have at it while he’d been flat on his back, firstly at the hospital, and secondly at the drab little bungalow he’d availed himself of to finish his recovery. (He had absolutely refused to let himself be ensconced in Casa del Stark, no matter how much Carter had cajoled and threatened.) And it wasn’t like they weren’t  _capable,_  was it? They’d been on the case. One of the SSR had been targeted, and whatever the reason, they’d work tirelessly to figure it out.

Unless, a part of Jack reminded him, Carter figured out just what had been taken from his briefcase by the would-be assassin. Had she figured it out already? Carter had too much moral fiber to let something like her own blackmail folder stand in her way on a case, but it would explain her wanting him out of it. It would explain why she didn’t trust him on this.

But how was he supposed to have told her?  _By the way, Carter, I was shot for that frame-up file with your name. Destroy it? Well, yes, I had intended to, but then…_  No, it wasn’t gonna fly. It might have been entirely fictional, but he hadn’t had the good sense to dispose of it. How would it have looked like to her to know that it not only still existed, but was in the hands of… well, clearly someone who had no compunctions about using a silencer.

No, they hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t volunteered. He knew he should have told them, but his life was a collection of regrets and this was just one act of cowardice among many. _You’re a good man, Jack,_  Carter had said, and he’d known her for a liar then and there.

And now -  _now_  - they had a lead.

(And Jack didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.)

_“Peggy’s worried about you,”_  Daniel had said to him earlier in the day, leaning against the door frame and trying to cajole Jack into leaving his work and joining them for dinner. He’d said it off-hand, as if that was an explanation for his earlier actions. As if Carter pitying him would box him into a position to expose himself further.

No, Jack knew exactly how much dirt Carter had on him, and a problem shared definitely wasn’t a problem halved in this instance. He didn’t  _think_ she’d tell Daniel, but, then, he hadn’t thought she’d dangle his entire life in front of him on a whim, either.

There were people in the world, Jack knew, who dreaded an investigation. People who knew that the faint hope of justice for their assailants would always be outweighed by the cost to them of someone dragging their lives out in the cold harsh light of day. People who dreaded having a kindly neighbor call in the police. People who said,  _no, it’s fine, he’s learnt his lesson. I don’t want to press charges._

And even  _that_  was dishonest. He couldn’t quite swallow the image of himself as the victim, no matter how he tried to turn it this way and that. No, what Carter had on him had the misfortune of being both true and voluntarily surrendered. And if she’d found one more reason to distrust him… well.

_Burying an ugly truth,_  she’d said, disgust in her eyes, and he couldn’t even blame her; not really.

_“I don’t need Carter playing nursemaid,”_  Jack had snapped, shaken.  _“And I couldn’t care less about your Army buddies, Sousa. I’m not going to be paraded around like some - some fucking -”_

_“It was just a suggestion,”_  Daniel had said, and,  _“I would have thought you’d be all for it,”_  and Jack had fought the roiling acid in his belly and had not thrown up. He’d wanted Daniel in that moment, helpless with the yearning, pitiless pull of it. He’d wanted the softness in his eyes and and curl of his smile and the way he leaned against the door frame and the way he tried to reach out, even after everything that had happened.

(Had Carter told him? Surely not. Surely it wasn’t in her - or in  _him_ , in Daniel’s concerned looks at Jack, in the way he kept sneaking glances at him, even now.)

They finally pulled up outside of Jack’s bungalow what felt like three hours but was only about thirty minutes later, and Jack struggled out without another look at Daniel. He could still hear the echo of Daniel’s earlier clumsy attempts at an overture, and he didn’t want a repeat performance.

“Jack.”

_Damn._  He stopped, turning around. It was getting dark, and he couldn’t see Daniel’s face very well, shadowed as he was in the cab of the car. “Yeah?”

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

Jack swallowed drily.  _You’re a good man, Jack._  Daniel, he was reasonably sure, had never had to rely on someone else for that judgement. His moral compass would take him true north, with none of the confusion and oscillations that dragged Jack this way and that. (And Carter? He doubted that anyone but the truest of true north would have been a match for Steve fucking Rogers.) They were good people, both of them. (And neither had ever needed someone to tell them that.) “Sure, Sousa,” he said, as lightly as he dared. “Later.”

*

“He’s fading.”

“Then wake him up.”

“I really don’t think -”

“ _Wake. Him. Up._ ”

Something sharp pricked against his neck, and he was abruptly awake again. The pain in his chest had ratcheted up to splintering shards of agony across and around his ribs, driving deep into his unprotected soft parts. “Hurts,” he grunted, and a small hand pressed against his forehead.

“Yes, I imagine it would. That was very foolish of you, Jack. You have a small amount of useful information, and an even smaller amount of use as a hostage. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t liquidate one to cash out the other.”

*

He didn’t sleep well that night. He’d skipped his physio exercises before bed and had to pay for that in the morning, groaning and shuddering through the painful stretches that would build up the strength of his pectorals. He couldn’t breathe properly, that was the problem. Doing the exercises was painful, but skipping them meant the next morning was even worse.

By the time he was clean and dressed, he was almost tired enough to crawl back into bed again.

_They have a lead,_  he reminded himself, and dragged himself to the office. The specter of Carter’s disgust hung over him like a black cloud. He didn’t even know what he was planning. What, he was going to chase down the file himself? He’d swoop in, hobbled as he was, and dispose of it before Carter saw?

Was it even a threat to her? Somehow, he didn’t think so. He couldn’t even explain it away as a desire to protect her. The file wasn’t hers - that much was clear - and couldn’t be used against her. Disposing of it, he knew, wouldn’t protect anyone but himself.

“Chief Thompson! We didn’t expect you in this morning. Aren’t you taking a break for the weekend?” Rose did indeed look surprised to see him.

Briefly, Jack wondered how bad he looked. “I’m fine, Roberts,” he said wearily, shoving the door open.

“Jack!” Carter, sitting behind Daniel’s desk, a folder spread out in front of her. “My God, what happened? You look terrible.” She half-rose out of the chair, the color draining from her face as she moved forward, as if readying herself to grab him.

Well, that answered the question of how he looked. “I’m fine, Marge,” he snapped, and carefully lowered himself into the chair opposite the desk. “As you were.”

That made her smile, at least a little. She still looked incredibly pale. “I didn’t think you’d be in today. I did say we have a handle on things. There’s no need to over-work yourself.”

He managed a shrug. “Well, you know me. Always eager to get into the action.” He stared back at her challengingly. “And it is, after all, my job.”

That didn’t seem to land as he had expected it to. She didn’t seem the least bit perturbed to have that reminder thrown at her. She frowned at him instead. Her hand twitched again, as if keeping still was an effort. “Jack. Is everything all right?”

*

“I think I’m beginning to see,” Dottie said. There was a frown on her face as she glanced across at the man sat beside Jack, a hand over his pulse-point. “Palo Alto, you said.” It wasn’t a question.

“Outside the facility,” the man stammered, his hand tight on Jack’s. “He was -”

“Yes,” Dottie said, voice soft. “I’m sure he was. He’s remarkably resourceful, in a bland, predictable sort of way.” She leaned forward, one blonde ringlet coming free from her careful coiffure. “Jack,” she asked him gently. She smelled of sunshine and violets. “Does anyone know where you are? Did you tell anyone where you were going?”

He stared up at her, a dull thudding in his ears.

*

He made Carter go away mainly by sniping at her until she had to retreat or lash out in return. It was a surprisingly effective strategy for dealing with her, and not really one he would have ordinarily employed against a woman. But Carter had just as much pride as he did, and poking at it made her hackles rise just as his would have done.  _Oh, Marge,_  he thought with a strange ache.  _You have to watch that ambition. You’re getting to be a bit too much like me, and it doesn’t suit you._

It wasn’t enough for her to have his balls in her perfectly manicured grip, was it? No.  _Sentiment, Marge. It’ll be the death of you._

She kept  _looking_  at him, stepping closer than he was expecting and peering at him as if this was an interrogation and she was trying to catch him out.  _It’s no use, you know it all already,_  he wanted to say. He smiled widely instead. “Well, gee, Marge, I know I’m just so gosh-darn pretty that the girls can’t keep away, but d’you think you could maybe clear out of here so I can get some work done?”

“This is Daniel’s office,” she said, not looking away. And there is was again, that sharp sliver of understanding in her eyes, sliding in between his ribs like a knife. She reached out a hand, touching the edge of his sleeve. “Jack…”

“I was just trying to be polite, Carter.” He pulled away brusquely. “ _Go._  Canoodle with Sousa, or whatever it is you normally do on a weekend.”

“And you won’t look at the case files?” She asked, skeptical. She looked to be on the verge of crossing her arms.

Jack rolled his eyes and moved past her to sit down behind Daniel’s desk. He needed to be sitting for this, he had a feeling that pausing for breath half-way through probably wouldn’t get the desired effect.  _Do it now._  “No, I figured I’d leave that in your capable hands, given how much progress you’ve made. Oh - wait, I forgot. You let it languish as a cold case for  _months._  You must want my desk real bad, Carter.” He tasted bile but his expression didn’t waver.

There was a brief flicker of genuine hurt in Carter’s eyes before she managed to clamp down on it, her gaze becoming cold, calculating. Her color was back, possibly through sheer rage at his insinuation. “Well, I did try to follow your example, but there wasn’t anyone handy I could beat into a forced confession.”

Jack drew in a sharp breath at that. He’d expected something like that, but… well, he was still not quite at 100%, after all. “Go home, Carter,” he said again, more quietly this time. “Let me have a look at the lead and see if I can do anything with it.”

She stared at him for a long moment then nodded, her lips tight.

He waited until she left before he opened the file. Well, the first file, the most current one. The filing cabinet was still open and he could see exactly how many inches had been allocated to him. He pulled out one of the older files at random, frowning as he flipped through it. Interview with day bellhop, interview with night bellhop, alibis of bellhops, photographs of bellhops, addresses of bellhops. Interview with day manager, interview with night manager, on and on, dozens of statements, hundreds of pages, endless photographs and notes and cross-checks. He grabbed another file. Staff at the coffee shop opposite. Regulars at the coffee shop opposite. Mailman. Florist on the corner. Florist’s order book. Florist’s customers for that day. Statements from the customers. Corroborating witnesses. On and on, a parade of people he’d never met or noticed as he went about his day. If they’d been any more thorough, Jack thought wretchedly, he’d have to get a restraining order. This was his entire day, mapped out and cross-referenced and corroborated by dozens of people.

None of whom had seen a thing.

He closed the files and slid them back into their original place in the filing cabinet. What had changed? They’d gone through  _everything_. What had been missed?

He flipped the file open. Florist, coffee shop, hotel staff, no change in statements or alibis. Carter had even checked the nearby buildings in case there was a way to cross from one roof to the other and come in that way. He had a vivid vision of her hanging from the side of the hotel in her smart skirt-suit and heels, swearing a blue streak.

He could see Daniel in there as well. Carefully crafted theories, ruled out one by one. A neat list of questions with notes and pencil marks beside them.  _How did they know which hotel and which room? Reception staff had no inquiries._  A smudged pencil notation indicated,  _wire-tap - had been in place for a while, there was dust on the bug._  Below it,  _why?_  There was no answer to that one. Either it was the hotel, or it was Jack. Likely it had been Jack. He’d stayed there before, after all, so it would be simple enough to arrange that in advance of his arrival.

_Why?_  stared up at him. It was the last question on the page, added in a different ink that the others.

The wire-tap, he realized suddenly. That must have been what they’d been working on. It wasn’t their lead - no fingerprints, nothing useful according to Samberly (Samberly? What the hell was Samberly doing involved in all this?) - but both Carter and Daniel had clearly figured out that it was what stood between them and making headway. If they could figure out  _why_ , then maybe, maybe…

Beneath that was a maintenance log.  _InfoWorld Telecommunications_. They performed maintenance on the hotel’s telephone system every six months. There had been one check carried out outside of sequence. The HQ was in Palo Alto, a hub surrounded by the spokes of warehouses.

_What does a telecomms firm need with warehouses?_

There was a note paperclipped below the log, half-folded over. Carter’s handwriting.  _Where is the missing file?_

*

“There we go,” Dottie breathed. She shifted so that the doctor could undo Jack's restraints and check his pulse. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Tell me about the file, Jack. What was in the file?”

He wanted to tell her. Oh, he really, really did. The doctor - was he a doctor? - was doing something to him, something that hurt and helped in equal measure, and Jack didn’t know whether he wanted him to stop or not. He didn’t know where the file was. He’d made it as far as the warehouse before Underwood had grabbed him, and it didn’t help to know that she wanted it as badly as he did, although probably for vastly different reasons.

If he bled out here because of his own cowardice, he hoped that Carter figured out where the file was. He owed her that much.

“The perimeter has been breached,” someone said, and it was confusing because it was not Underwood and it was not the doctor. Someone else? Jack struggled to turn his head and look at the whoever-it-is. Tall, blonde hair, unfamiliar. “We need to go.”

“I’m not  _finished._ ” Dottie did not look pleased.

“For God’s sake, he’s clearly useless. Look, if you’re squeamish -” There was something cold pressing against Jack’s throat. It stung as he swallowed.

Dottie looked even less pleased. She shifted in her seat, left right  _up._

*

He left the papers exactly as he had found them, locked up the office and exited the building without being seen. Where was Carter?

The car-rental place down the road was happy to give him his pick, yessir, sign right here.

He hadn’t figured out what he planned to do beyond some vague notion of getting ahead of Carter’s investigation. Maybe InfoWorld had the file, maybe they’d just installed the wire-tap as a third-party supplier.

It was fine. The drive to Palo Alto was over five hours; plenty of time to figure it out on the way.

*

"I _said_ , I'm not finished." The man’s head hit the ground with a dull thud, his eyes blankly staring upwards. Dottie sat back down. Left, right,  _relax_.

Jack breathed out slowly.  _She thinks she has no tells,_  he thought, amused. He couldn’t do anything about it, of course - by the time she was close enough for him to spot them it was too late - but it was strangely comforting to think that she wasn’t perfect in this. Maybe he couldn’t stop her. But Carter -

“Tell me what’s in the file, Jack. Everything you remember about M. Carter.  _All of it,_ ” Dottie Underwood said, and dug her fingers into the junction of nerves at his elbow.

*

He was at the city limits, and he had a plan. He -

There was a gap in his memory. He remembered the _Welcome to Palo Alto_ sign. He remembered parking the rental far enough away so that it wouldn't be immediately spotted. He remembered visually measuring the distance to the warehouse, wondering if he'd make it that far. And -

\- then he was waking up with Underwood bending over him, his head throbbing.

*

"Let him go."

He didn't ever hear the door burst open, too busy gasping with pain as he was suddenly dragged to his feet, Underwood behind him, something cold and hard digging into his ribs. The doctor - had he been a doctor? - was on the ground. His left eye was missing, the syringe still in his hand. 

_Good shot, Daniel,_  Jack thought, and managed a smile.

Behind him, Dottie was smiling at Carter and digging her gun into his unprotected side. “I only wanted to say hello, Peggy,” she said, sing-song. “Is that such a terrible thing for an old friend?”

“Let him go, Dottie,” Carter said again, slow and patient. She was wearing the same little skirt-suit she’d worn in Daniel’s office the day before. Or was it still yesterday?

He was very confused. His ribs hurt, Daniel had his gun out and a gash over his eye, and Carter -  _Peggy_  - had a gun pointed at him, even though he hadn’t done anything this time! Why did she look so angry? What had he done? “Carter,” he said, and it came out slurred. “Don’t shoot me.” He thought something flickered over her face at that, bright and sharp and painful.

“I’m not going to shoot you, Jack,” Carter said, perfectly calmly, and shot him.

His legs collapsed beneath him, slicing away his weight from Dottie’s grip and dumping him heavily on the floor with a pained gasp.

Carter didn’t even look at him. Her gun was still up, unimpeded and pointed at Dottie’s head. “Why? What is it this time, Dottie? Why him?”

“Why, Peggy,” Dottie said, her hands raised decorously, the gun dangling from her grip. “Like I said. I just wanted to say hello, that was all.” She glanced down at where Jack was staring up at her, white-faced with pain. “Jack’s such fun to play with.” One corner of her mouth curled. “Almost as fun as you.”

“Peggy, we need a medic,” Daniel said, cutting off anything else Underwood might have tried. He was on the ground beside Jack, checking him over frantically. The leg injury from Peggy’s shot hurt like hell but it was pretty superficial - side of the thigh, meat only, and a through and through - but the rest of Jack had been subject to Dottie’s ministrations and hadn’t been so lucky. Daniel had both hands on Jack’s chest, palpating gently to check on his existing injuries. “ _Peggy,_ ” he snapped. “He’s bleeding internally, we need a medic  _now_.”

Carter took her eyes off Dottie for one moment, eyes flickering down to where Jack was sprawled in the dirt.

_That's Underwood gone again,_ Jack thought. _Shoulda kept your eyes on her, Carter. Why d'you look away?_ His vision swam, gray and mottled around the edges, framing the twin faces bending over him in a halo of flickering lights.

*

_(Listen, one of the veterans’ groups out here is planning a parade for Armistice Day. They had one in Birmingham, Alabama last year, it was very well received. Anyway, I figured it might help if they could start things off right, you know? So… what do you think?_

He hadn’t actually come out and  _asked_. Jack doesn’t know which was worse - the warmth in Daniel’s eyes, or the reason for it.

He hadn’t worn that fucking medal for anything he could get out of. He’ll tell the story, he’ll lap up the plaudits, but it turned out that even his hypocrisy had limits. He couldn’t stomach it, the thought of standing beside Daniel wearing - wearing that. Not  _that._ )

*

“I can’t,” he told Daniel, his voice thick with terror and regret, staring up at Daniel's bloodied face and fisting a hand in Daniel's shirt. It was suddenly imperative that he make Daniel understand. He wasn’t rejecting him, - he  _wasn’t_  - but he couldn’t do as Daniel asked. Not  _that._  “I can’t go to the parade with you, Daniel. I’m sorry, I’m  _sorry_  -”

_You’re doing what you always do,_  Peggy’s voice said, and something in Jack twisted in shame and grief at the memory. He’d lose them both; he knew that now. Neither one would want anything to do with him. It was a miracle they’d let him in as far as they had. And now, now...

“Shhhhh,” Daniel said, leaning down to press his forehead against Jack’s. “It’s OK. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a stupid parade, Jack. It was just a stupid thought. Please - please don’t -” And that was horror in Daniel’s face, true horror, because helplessly, hopelessly, his face turned away, Jack had begun to cry. “Jack - please,  _please_  -”

“The medics are on their way,” Carter said, running back into the room. Underwood was long gone, of course, and it was just them, and two corpses.  _Almost homely._  “They’re just bringing -” She stopped, her eyes wide. She raised a hand to her mouth. “Jack?”

He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to meet her gaze.

“You - I can’t do this,” he whispered. “You’re both so - and that’s not me, it’s  _not_.” He opened his eyes and glared at Daniel, suddenly furious. “You kept asking why. Well, either she told you, or she didn’t, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t fucking do that, don’t you understand? Either you know and you’re just like her -” he turned to Carter, furious. “Or you don’t, and you’re just - you’re just like the others. And I can’t - I  _can’t_  -”

“It was just a parade, Jack,” Daniel said helplessly. “I - I didn’t think it would upset you. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“What kind of parade?” Carter asked. She hadn’t moved from her spot, a hand over her mouth, looking as if Jack had stuck a knife in between her ribs and left her to bleed out. “Daniel.  _What kind of parade?_ ”

“A veterans group,” Daniel said, bewildered. “They were going to do it during Armistice Day, and I thought it might be nice to ask Jack to lead - you know, because of -”

“Oh  _no._ ” Carter - Peggy - whispered, and dropped her hand. She was as white as a sheet. She closed her eyes for a moment, visibly trying to gather herself, then moved forward awkwardly, shuffling forward on her knees so that she was close enough to wrap an arm around Jack, raising her other hand to his face. “Jack, you stupid,  _stupid_  man.” She pressed her face against his hair, her shoulders shaking.

“Peggy?” Daniel asked, fearful. “Peggy, what…?”

Blessedly, that was when the medics arrived.

*

His mouth was dry. Someone was pressing something cool and wet against his lips - ice chips, it must have been. He accepted them gratefully, not even attempting to open his eyes. Someone - someone else? - was holding his hand.

He slept.

*

_(You know, you guys have a strange idea of romance,_  he’d said, shortly after he’d woken up from his botched assassination, peering up at them from his horizontal vantage point.  _I’m sure you lovebirds have better things to do than wait around at my bedside._

_Not really,_  Carter had said with a blindingly wide smile.

When she looked at him like that, he could almost imagine calling her  _Peggy_.)

*

“Jack. Come on, Jack. Time to wake up.”

“Go’wayCa’r,” he muttered, mouth still stuck together.

Another ice chip was pressed against his cracked lips.

Blinking brought them both into focus. “Deja vu,” he groaned. He couldn’t quite summon the strength to look away. Daniel had a butterfly bandage over his brow, and Carter was a bit bruised and scraped. They both had dark circles under their eyes, and a fairly impressive arsenal stashed in shoulder holsters.

Jack had never seen anyone more beautiful. “Didn’t know they made ladies’ shoulder holsters,” he said apropos of nothing. He couldn’t take his eyes off them, at the splendid defiance of their bruises and exhaustion. They looked ready to pass out.

“They do, actually. But Ana Jarvis made this one for me.”

Of course she had. The Jarvises were evidently as crazy as Carter.

He wondered if he could get away with going back to sleep. Carter looked awfully intent on something, and it made him nervous. Daniel, too.  _The file,_  he thought suddenly, his stomach sinking. He swallowed. “Out with it,” he said, gathering up what remained of his courage. “What?”

They looked at each other. “So,” Daniel asked at last, nervous. “About that missing file -”

*

“We just keep hurting each other, don’t we,” Peggy said softly. She’d waited until Daniel had stepped outside for a comfort break and slid onto Jack’s bed, twisting her fingers around his. “You - when I saw you there, and she had a gun on you, and all I could think was,  _not again. I can’t do that again._ ” She shuddered. “You can’t keep doing that to me, Jack, or to Daniel. You don’t know what it was like, when you were unconscious. You - you’ve no idea.”

There was something obscenely intimate in the way she said that, as if she’d ripped her heart open and was letting it bleed out in front of him. He shivered. “You’d miss me, is that it, Carter?” He tried.

“Yes.” She said it unhesitatingly. “Yes, Jack. And I thought… I…” She shook her head. “I had no idea you didn’t know. That you thought otherwise. About either of us, really.” She closed her eyes for a moment, biting her lip. “Do you think,” she asked, and her voice trembled, “that you would have taken that file if I hadn’t said what I’d said?”

_Burying an ugly truth_  rang between them, poisonously thick. He remembered the terror of it, the sudden certainty that she’d throw the knowledge in his face with Daniel right there. He’d never asked her to keep it a secret, of course, and she’d never promised to do so. Would he have taken that file if he hadn’t felt himself lost already? Could he have trusted her, once, twice, a million times between then and now?

“I don’t know,” Jack admitted, feeling the depth of his cowardice sting him. He couldn’t even choose the path of blackmail and betrayal without a prompter. He felt the tell-tale twinge in his chest that told him he’d drawn his shoulders up defensively. “Maybe. You… you can be a threat when you want to be, Carter.” He hated the plaintiveness of his voice, the urge to explain and to defend.  _It’s not my fault! It’s not!_  Hadn’t he spent his life feeling like this?

“Yes,” she said, and she sounded sad. “And I was a threat to you, even if I didn’t know it.” Her hand tightened over his.

“That’s not it at all,” Jack said. He felt exhausted. “I just…” He shook his head. Suddenly, the thought of blurting out the half-thought and half-hoped things he’d been guarding against seemed even more ill-advised. They had done some truly appalling things to each other, hadn’t they? There could be no trust there, not when he'd done so little to earn it.

And Daniel? Well, Daniel was Daniel, safe and reliable, a good man.

(A man who’d spit in Jack’s face if he knew what Jack had -)

He tried to make himself believe otherwise. Daniel was kind, he knew that. He wouldn’t -

“Jack,” Peggy said, and cupped his jaw. Her breath ghosted over his mouth as she bent over him. “I trust you. I  _trust_  you. How could you think otherwise? How could you imagine that I wouldn’t - that I could -” Something wet brushed against his cheeks, and he was horrified to realize it was tears. “You nearly died doing the right thing. All I wanted to do was keep you safe. It’s all I’ve been trying to do this entire time, for you, for Daniel, for -” She swallowed. “That file was nothing, it was  _nothing_ , Jack. How could you ever doubt me? How could you doubt  _yourself_?” She shuddered, her grip on him tightening, her face millimeters from his. “I’ve been trying to do this for  _months_ , you idiot. You need to stop running away from me.”

“And - Daniel?” He could barely make his lips move, terrified they’d accidentally brush against hers. He felt dizzy with terror.

Peggy smiled into his mouth. “He’s been trying for even longer.” Her hands were strong and warm and dry where they held him in place, her mouth soft and sweet against his.

She pulled away after only a moment. He was still groggy from the drugs, and his breathing was most definitely compromised; a moment was pretty much all he’d be able to manage for some time. Still, she didn’t seem to mind.  _Peggy._  Peggy didn’t seem to mind.  _The file was nothing,_  she’d said. He thought he might cry from the sheer relief of it, the helpless flood of terror released from his chest.

Daniel came back to find her curled up against him. “Oh,” he said, standing just inside the door, a stupid expression on his face, stunned and hopeful at the same time.

“Close the door,” Peggy suggested. “Maybe lock it.”

“It’s a hospital room,” Daniel said, still staring at the both of them. He had the look, Jack thought, startled, of a starving man suddenly presented with a banquet. “It doesn’t lock.”

Peggy shrugged a little. “Living dangerously, then.”

In two steps Daniel was beside them, one hand on the bed, another over Peggy's.

"Daniel -" Jack started, helplessly.

Daniel’s mouth fit over his like a puzzle piece sliding into place.

*

Later - minutes, hours, days later - he pulled away. Peggy’s hand was tight around his, a silent testament of faith.  _Rip off the band-aid,_  he thought desperately, and reached again for that trust.

Jack took a deep breath. “Daniel,” he said, and he was proud that his voice didn’t tremble. “There’s something I want to tell you. It’s… it’s about Okinawa.”

*

fin

**Author's Note:**

> Armistice Day became Veterans Day in 1954, although veterans parades started in 1947 in Alabama, and spread throughout the country fairly rapidly. I've brought forward the timeline for the first Californian parade a little bit, mostly as an excuse to torture Jack.


End file.
